Lead UX Designer

Details:
**Location**:
South Kensington
Category:
Design
Marketing
Digital

**Salary**:
£57,000
Contract type:
Contract Permanent
Hours:
Full time
Telephone:
+447479219765
- Lead UX Designer- About the role
- Creating digital products that our customers love is a vital step in achieving the Natural History Museum’s mission of creating advocates for the planet. The digital portfolio facilitates tasks such as booking a ticket and planning a visit to the Museum, as well as answering users’ questions about nature and motivating them to get involved and take action to protect their local biodiversity. Effective use of digital gives us a global reach, allowing us to engage more deeply with wider and more diverse audiences.
- Contributing both as a leader and a practitioner, the Lead UX designer plays a key part in this mission, being responsible for the UX, interaction and service design of the Museum’s customer-facing digital products and services. Supported by a team of UX and UI designers, the Lead works to understand the Museum’s audiences and design usable, accessible and loveable digital experiences for them.
- Working closely with the Head of Digital Product and other key stakeholders, the Lead UX designer maintains a holistic view of the digital eco-system and develops the UX strategy for our core products. Through providing feedback and guidance to the digital product teams, the Lead ensures the Museum’s products are on-brand and set up for success.
- The Lead designer is part of the Communications, Digital, Marketing and Publishing leadership team, representing the digital product design team on wider Museum projects, such as developing the brand identity.
- Through providing leadership, support, guidance and coaching for the UX and UI designers, the Lead brings the designers together as a design team and helps them progress in their careers.
- Main Responsibilities
- As a design lead:
- Maintain an overarching view of the Museum’s digital products and services, working across product teams to ensure user journeys are set up for success. Challenge and provide feedback to product teams to help them improve their products and explore new ideas
- Collaborate with other functional leads across the department to develop strategies for the Museum’s core products based on an understanding of the needs of their respective target audiences
- Lead on wider Museum projects and new initiatives, ensuring digital design and audience needs are represented. Maintain positive and productive working relationships with other creative designers within the Natural History Museum (e.g. those responsible for the overall brand identity, marketing materials, the look and feel of exhibitions, etc)
- Review Product and Design team outputs and share best practice to ensure brand adherence, consistency and quality standards are met. Own design responsibilities across the department, ensuring digital products meet WCAG accessibility standards
- Establish a philosophy/mindset for how the design team approaches its work. Own and co-ordinate design team initiatives such as the design pattern library and digital style guide to increase the maturity and effectiveness of the team

As a UX designer:
- Work within a small, objective-focused cross-functional product team to design and deliver inspiring, challenging, and empowering user experiences across digital and social platforms
- Contribute to the development of our understanding of NHM’s audiences, and their motivations, passions, and hierarchy of needs via qualitative user research on digital designs and prototypes

As a manager:
- Provide leadership, support, guidance and coaching for the digital product design team
- Recruit designers and work with agencies to grow the team, ensuring design needs within product teams are fulfilled

Key working relationships:
- Head of Digital ProductProduct managers
- Head of Digital ContentLead Developer
- Head of Marketing
- Print design studio

About you- You’ve led the design and successful delivery of multiple complex digital products and services
- Enthusiasm for acting as a UX design specialist within a cross functional delivery team, working across all stages of design, from discovery through to delivery including:

- A variety of user research and testing methods
- Wireframes to low fidelity / high fidelity prototypes, to polished final products with a variety of digital products, including web sites, mobile apps, and complex online interactives
- Working with Product Managers to facilitate discovery research
- Usability of digital products, services and experiences
- Working to quarterly planning and Agile delivery
- Leading workshops to facilitate user-centric outcomes- A knowledge of, and interest in, Design Ops and developing processes and ways of working to create better outcomes for teams
- Ability to think strategically about the contribution of UX & design to the overall product and prioritise, i.e. to assess wher